The flood gate is open.....

Will was watching the cat in this one.

Will is trying to sit for a few seconds with the boppy....
he was actually able to do it for a moment or two.

William has begun to drool. At first it was just bubbles, but now it has progressed to a trickle. Soon we shall see what amounts to a constant Mississippi river flowing down his chin. Today I started to get a list going for my big trip. William and I also sang a lot today as he loves music. Even when it is sung by me!

100 posts....

This is my 100th post! Amazing. Too bad it isn't more interesting. I must tell the world how much I LOVE craigslist. I made 55 bucks today selling stuff I was gonna get rid of for free. I sold a desk that we had purchased back in Madison that was no longer needed and the bumbo seat I just bought, but didn't really like. I bought it for 10 and sold it for 15! I am selling someone else my moses basket tomorrow for 15 dollars, and I got it for free. I would feel guilty about that but I need the money too much to feel bad. I took Sprout to the Dr this morning because he has developed eczema. I diagnosed it correctly, so I am not sure why I went. I need to bathe him nightly now and grease him up morning and night with Eucerin. I am hoping he isn't allergic to the cats. That would stink especially since we just spent all that cash saving Maggie. I went to Salvation Army and got some good books and some cute pants for baby for 50cents. All in all a good day. Is anyone else watching Larissa on Jepoardy? She is amazing, and has such a flat affect it kills me.

More Fun Presents!

Our dear friend Patty, who by the way is the only reason I got to know Jason, sent William the greatest box of fun today. We will see her when we come up to Washington and William will probably thank her by spitting up on her or leaving a puddle of drool on her shirt. Thanks Patty and Ryan!

New Room, New Worries

Will in his crib, in his new room. The blankets around him seem to help him feel secure.

Working on head control during tummy time.
New room arrangement, it looks more crowded than it is at this angle. Note the windows on the balcony that I fear.
Hanging out under the baby gym.


Will does this weird face pulling thing from time to time. Sometimes it looks quite painful. As they say in the south, "That boy ain't right!"

Will spent last night in his new room, and slept from 9:40 till almost 6 this morning. I was by far more scared and nervous than he could have ever been. There is a balcony off his room and all night I imagined someone coming in to his room and stealing him. It was horrible, not horrible enough to have him sleep in our room though. I have the baby monitor, and the apartment is only 1,050sq ft, so I am sure if anything happened I would hear it. The room switch was tons of work, but we accomplished a lot and cleared out tons of junk that we didn't really need anymore. I haven't put all the stuff on the walls yet, but I will this week. We spent today out running errands, mainly grocery shopping while I struggled to come up with ideas for new things to eat that don't cost a lot of money. I hate to try an new recipe that I have to purchase tons of ingredients for that I would not normally buy. Then if you hate it, you are stuck with all these things you will never use again. The big news however was that at 5:35pm William laughed out loud! A real laugh, not just a weird cough like thing he was doing. He did it in response to me laughing at a funny face he was making. It was very exciting, and just in time for us to go home to Washington!

Picnicing in 1771

Today we visited a working 1771 farm. They had all the buildings and people in costume working the fields. They also had period animals and I guess, period port o potties. We brought a picnic lunch and Will slept right through it. He looked very much like Uncle Patrick in his cool sunglasses. I carried him in the baby bjorn since strollers wouldn't roll well on the rough paths. We went to Georgetown after and walked around. We stopped in at Baby Gap and bought some socks on sale and a monkey shirt, also on sale. We then found our way to Starbucks and had a cool drink. After that we headed home to start on the great switching of the rooms for Will to start his life as a big boy. I may get it all switched over by tuesday and I may not. We shall see....

William needs his own space!

Will wearing his fuzzibunz

I am considering changing Will to his own room this long memorial weekend. He is a noisy little guy and he wakes up occasionally in the night and does a strange series of grunts and coos and wiggles a lot until he falls back asleep. I wake up from this of course, and though he is not crying it does keep me awake for a while. I think if I move him, I will only hear him when he really needs us. For 2 nights he slept straight through and then last night he was up every 3 hours eating. I am not sure if this was a growth spurt or he wasn't feeling well, but it sucked. This is why I hesitate to move him. If I have to get up over and over, I would rather do it in my own room than have to go to his and sit on the loveseat. Though we may both go back to sleep sooner if we do it that way. It is hard to decide, and if I do it I won't want to switch it back as it involves moving a great deal of electronics and furniture. We'll see how it goes tonight. If he sleeps through again I may do it. Otherwise, we have been having a good time. I ran errands yesterday, returned some things I ordered from Lands End to Sears -I love that you can return stuff there and not have to pay shipping back. I bought Will a cute outfit to wear home. I am gearing up for our big trip to Washington. I am a little nervous about making through 3 airports with just me and the baby. We have a layover in Wisconsin and I will be awfully tempted to get in a taxi and run back to Madison. My mom is going to meet us at the airport and then we will go meet Jason's mom for lunch. Jason arrives the following week, getting in on Thursday night. Molly's graduation is Saturday, the 14th. I still haven't figured out what to get her. The fuzzi bunz by the way, are working GREAT! They are so simple and I really love them. I am even using them out and about so I am now using 1 disposable at night and that is it! Go Green/Save Green!

Ahhh Precious Sleep, How I've missed you!

Last night William Olen Simmons slept from 10 until 6 am. That's right....8 hours! It was wonderful to wake up and see daylight creeping in. Tonight he went to bed at 9:40 and I haven't heard a peep since. Amazing. But it is only 9:59..... Today we met up with our dear friend Rachel and she took us to Bethesda for lunch and to go to a consignment shop that had used cloth diapers. We went to a microbrewery, even though we weren't drinking. It was very good, I had the pulled pork BBQ. The consignment shop had fuzzibunz, which are about as close as you can get in a cloth diaper that is as easy as a disposable. They are normally very expensive, about 17 dollars each. They had 36 of them, 18 in small and 18 in medium for only 3.50 each! Great deal! They normally sell used for 10 each. I don't think the shop lady knew anything about them, or she would have charged much more. I started using them tonight and Jason and I both love them. They are really adjustable, and really easy to put on. And I got enough of them to only have to wash every 2-3 days and sizes that will fit till he weighs over 30 pounds, all for the cost of 3 months worth of disposables! My BPA free bottles came today too. They are very nice and he seems to like the nipple shape. I will post some random pics from the past couple of days.

Happy Birthday Gabriela!

Sunday we went to Solon and Andrea's for Gabriela's first b-day party. It was great, Will got lots of attention of course. He loved Alessandra, he watched her a lot and would just smile over and over when she was close to him. She is so gentle and lovable with him. She is just exploding in vocabulary right now and her fine motor skills are very impressive. She made a bead necklace with really small beads, which is pretty good for 2 and a 1/2. Gabriela was walking a lot and can stand up in the middle of the room now, and she took some steps towards her birthday cake with out holding on to anything. A girl will do a lot for chocolate. We gave her the fisher price gumball machine which she was crazy about. She loves to put things in right now so it was perfect. I didn't get many great pictures of her, she looks sad in most of them, so I won't put them up. Will bonded with Uncle Solon last night through opera. For some reason Will was captivated when Solon sang Italian opera to him. We were all amazed at how he smiled and cooed for it. It was very sweet. We came home pretty late so we went right to bed.

Fun Times While Dangling

Feelin Crafty....

I made some bibs today out of some cute prints and backed them with terry cloth for extra absorbancy. They turned out really cute, considering I made the pattern out of newspaper. We need a lot of bibs these days, Will spits up constantly.

We let Jason sleep in today and went out early to a big baby flea market. I found some nice toys really cheap and a couple of nice outfits. Other than that we stayed around here and hung out. We gave Will his bath tonight so he was very happy, until he got his face in the water for a split second and got very mad and scared. I felt terrible, he is just so slippery. He was fine though, and we completed bathtime with no further incident.

The Ultimate Anti-Depressant

A stressful 24 hours....

I had my final interview for the job on Monday and we once again drove to the headquarters which is 40 miles away. I sat down with the CEO and talked to him for over 30 min after waiting for him to arrive for over 30 min. I thought it went well and he told me that they would call me the next day. The whole time I have been interviewing with this group I have told them I could only give them 2 days a week, and all the interviewers have been asking again, "Only 2 days?" YES!Only 2 days! That is all I need to work, so that's all I'm willing to work! So after the Director of Nursing Services gave me the distinct impression that I would have an offer on the table by Tuesday and the orientation starting this week, I get a letter stating that they are not offering me the position. Arrgh! So I have driven 160 miles, worked for free 8 hours till 12:30am and been lead along for 3 weeks and they decided that I shouldn't have it because I can't give them anything over 2 days! If that was a problem they should have just never called me in the first place! They were very nice in the letter, stating that they really liked me and were very impressed with my experience and references, but so what? I needed that job! Uggh! Any way that is now over, and I will find something soon. After I picked up Jason at work, we went to Toys R Us for Gabriela's B-day Gift. Jason tried to use our credit card and it wouldn't go through. I haven't been able to find mine for a few days, but this is really not unusual for me and they always turn up. Well, when we got home I called the company and they said that someone called on the 12th at 7:30 pm stating that it was me, and said that they had lost the card and wanted 2 new ones sent to my address. So I guess someone was planning on getting them out of my mailbox. I was confused on how they were able to accomplish this since they wouldn't know my information. I then people searched my name on yahoo and up popped my address. That is all they ask for when you call the credit card company. I alerted them that this was fraud, but it freaks me out that someone may be planning on taking stuff out of my mailbox and using it! I got those cards cancelled, am having new ones sent again, I will watch the mail like a hawk, and I put fraud alerts on the credit reporting agencies so they will call me if anyone seeks credit in our names. I also put a password on my accounts so no one can just call and make changes without it. I must have dropped it in the neighborhood. I remember having it at Micheal's when I was getting the stuff for Mother's day. So all in all it's been a rough 24 hours. But hopefully things will turn around now. On a weird note, yesterday at walmart they had a Barbie like doll that was the Virgin Mary and a Ken like doll that was Jesus. It was kind of disturbing. I felt like kids wouldn't give those objects the proper respect they deserved. I would hate to see Jesus out in the sandbox, in the rain, or dressed up in Ken's Hawaiian shirt for heaven's sake! It seemed sacrilegious! Let me know what you think......

Random Expressions

Leaky Bottles and Dry Bottoms

We are now officially in cloth diapers full time. I must say I truly love it. I am actually having less leaks than I had with disposables. So often when I would change Will and then nurse him he would pee out the side of the disposable, this is not a problem with the cloth. I am going to do 2 extra loads a week, but is that really so much to ask when I am saving 30 bucks a month at least on diapers? The bottle issue is another story. I started with a full supply of Avent bottles I had left from daycare. They were in great shape, many brand new. While I was pregnant the news came out about Polycarbonates and the BPA chemicals that they can leach, so I got rid of them and bought the cheap Gerber 5 oz and NUK nipples. The flow was so slow that he would take over 1 hour to complete a feeding. Then we switched to the old rubber nipples. They work for a while, but then they tend to get clogged or something, because the flow backs off and then we are back to why we quit the NUKs. Jason and I don't like the 9 oz Gerbers that are so long and clunky, so we wanted a shape like Avent, but without the BPA. Many of these bottles cost 7-10 dollars each, yikes! Gerber made one like avent but without the BPA so I bought those. Every time I filled them, no matter how I twisted on the cap, they leaked like crazy! It was so annoying! So then I remembered that the Avent sippy cups are not made of the Polycarbonate and they are supposed to fit the Avent Nipple. (It shows it on the package!) So I went and found the 9 oz cups and the nipples in the right flow rate, took them home and they leaked all over! Arrrgghhh! So Jason and I have been to all kinds of stores looking for the right kind, and have had little luck. I could switch to the playtex nurser but I am to thrifty to pay 7.50 every 2 weeks for liners. I just ordered some MAM bottles from Amazon so we will see if these can hold the liquid in the bottle instead of leaking like a sieve. Soon I think I will dip a rag in a bowl of formula and have him suck that like they did for a baby pig in Farmer Boy! I will let you know how the situation works out.

Comparing

This is pretty dark and yellowed, but that is me in Julie's arms at about Will's age.
This is Jason at about 3 months.
And Will. I think he has my head shape, and some of Jason's cheeks. He definetly has Jason's mouth and my nose. Sadly he also seems to have my hairline. I am still hoping it will end up curly. It is so fun to figure out who ended up where!

First Mother's Day and new toys....

Today was my first Mother's Day. It was very nice, Jason let me have a good night's sleep and got up with the baby at 1am and 4. I got up at 6 since by then I really needed to feed him! I then went back to sleep and slept till 10:30! It was so nice. Then we all took baths and went out to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. I had the Jamaican Jerk Pizza which was good, but really hot. We drove to Rockville after that and returned some bottles to Buy Buy Baby and went to Old Navy and got Sprout some onesies. I got a Caramel Macchiato and Jason got coffee and we went home. I was going to make Sausage and Peppers for dinner, but we aren't really hungry after a big lunch, so I will make it tomorrow. Yesterday I got Will an excersaucer and a Bumbo seat for 10 bucks at the Goodwill. We cleaned them both and let him try them out. He is still too little for them but he seemed to enjoy a few minutes in them. I will post a few pictures of him in them and one of myself and him for Mother's day. I apologize for how I look however, the camera adds 100 pounds!

Gooooaaallll!!!!

Today William followed in Daddy and Uncle Patrick's foot steps as an excellent soccer player! The little Sambas are still big, but they stayed on long enough to get the pictures. Thanks Aunt Molly!